I’d like to respond to concerns players have raised about ascended items. Please keep in mind that we’re releasing this as one portion of a massive November update that introduces and improves many aspects of challenge, progression, and rewards. With this and upcoming updates, we view ourselves as introducing large amounts of content with supporting systems and features, akin to an expansion pack, building on Guild Wars 2 through a series of live releases. So it’s important for us to be able to add an expansion pack’s worth of progression and rewards to support that content.

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.

Ascended and infusion rewards will be available in both PvE and WvW over time, and be made available through all sorts of content around the world including existing content. PvP will remain unaffected to ensure our intended PvP balance going forward. We are also working on other reward and progression systems for the game that tie into current and new content and features. As you know we care very much about your support and opinion and are listening intently to what you say.

Finally we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the upcoming content, and we will ensure we share our thoughts with you on the experiences we share in the Lost Shores.

Chris Whiteside – Studio Design Director

First time posting on these forums, but how can you say that with a straight face whenever there is NO difference between exotics and legendary stats.

The ascended garbage with infusion is fine (even though similar mechanics failed in toher games, Radiance/Gloom LotRO), but the stat increase is wholly uncalled for.
Whoever came up with that idea at Anet should be shown the door and have their personal belongings Fed Ex’d to them.

You dun goofed on this one Anet.

Easy.
He just created said gap by buffing legendaries to ascended level.

A gear treadmill would indicate that you need to grind for new gear as to experience new content, as well as stay competitive. From the reply, I feel we can infer rather easily that by playing the game in general, ascended gear will be obtained. Not only by running dungeons.

So, we get a whole slew of new content. I can play through all of it with my mix of exotics and slightly crappier gear. I can still kill people in wvw, even if they do have a piece or two of ascended gear. And all the while doing so, I will probably obtain ascended gear of my own. Where’s the bad?

I want new content. I like new loot. New items. I don’t care if it’s visual, horizontal, vertical, or a few point step ladder.

Bless your hearts! You keep trying to explain it better, but you just end up confirming players’ fears. I think what many are saying is that they just don’t want any further vertical gear progression. Period. That includes legendaries, which don’t have better stats at the moment.

There’s a fine line between love and hate and people wouldn’t be this upset if they didn’t really love the game.

so at lvl 80 you already had: Basic, Fine, Masterwork, Rare and Exotic, they are all upgrades from each other no one cried about that, now they introduce Ascended which supposedly will be the last tier of gear in the game (they will just change the infusions in future content that’s it) and people freak out… makes sense.

Just like exotics were supposedly the last tier of equipment?

who said that?

Funny, with the frequency this has been quoted in the thread i´d thought everyone would have seen it….

Lead designer of the game said it:
“Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too”

see i even but italic on the important part.

They didn’t say that the rarest where Exotic…

They however said that legendaries were.
They have the legendaries as the peak of gear progression, they had the same stats as exotics.
They had multiple skins that were not as expensive as legendaries but still rare, and they had same stats as exotics.
The reward at the end of the campaign is exotic.

And you tell me that exotics wasn´t supposed to be the max statted gear?

They also said that Legendary weapons weren’t finished, people just assumed they where just talking about aesthetics.

There are videos of the developers talking about how legendarys have the same stats as exotics. We didnt assume anything. We were told. And we were lied to.

They also said that Legendary weapons weren’t finished, people just assumed they where just talking about aesthetics.

And they´d add to their stats?…wouldn´t that make them better than not so rare gear then? You know, like they said it wouldn´t be?

The game currently has a clear max stat gear that´s exotics, all other rare skins have same amount os stats, including legendaries.
Now they pump up legendaries and make a new tier, making rarer items more powerful.

This has obviously been planned for a while, so why hasn’t it been mentioned in any of the recent interviews? I’m sorry, but dropping the news of sweeping game changes a few days before a patch launches just isn’t acceptable in my eyes. Communication is important and we need to know exactly what is on the table for the immediate future.

There was a gap in preception between them, which I think is what the devs were getting at. Also, what I think they were getting at when they say “reward”. I’ll grant them that, since it’s been their design principle so far. I’ll also grant them a “gateway grind” for a particular content chain, since it’s optional doesn’t effect the rest of the game.

The screenshots posted show that Ascended gear has superior stats. If it releases that way, then it does effect the rest of the game. That’s the issue.

Hrm really? They specifically said there will NEVER be any increase in gear stats? Like you heard one of them say those exact words? Cause if they only mentioned something that sounded similar its not the same, as before the manifest is NOT a contract. They are free to change and add whatever content they want to the game. I mean they created Guildwars 2 they didn’t have us harping on them and look how great it turned out.

I never suggested that their manifesto is a contract, nor that they are somehow forbidden from changing the game as they see fit. In the same spirit, I am allowed to provide my feedback.

In my opinion, their single stat plateau without a gear treadmill is one of the things that makes Guild Wars 2 so great. Without that, I am much less interested in staying with this game in the long term. It might still be great (or greater!) for others, which is fine, just not for me.

Hrm yes I read that blog to, allow me to pull a part of it,

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

They don’t need to make gear treadmills, they just now chose to do it, its optional, your not being forced to grind for it, and those that will might have a slight advantage over others, but a game the boasts the skill of a player this shouldn’t make a whole lot of difference right? Seriously you guys are blowing this way out of proportion.

Yes, they don’t need to make gear treadmills. Yes, they chose to do this. No, it is not optional – in fact they explicitly include a gating mechanic as part of the new gear in addition to the stats.

You’ll also note that they say the player shouldn’t need the latest gear – that the player would still be “just as powerful” without it. How is that not explicitly broken here?

How am I blowing it out of proportion? They said they wouldn’t do this. Now, they apparently are doing this. At what point have I exaggerated?

Yes, the percentage change in stats here is fairly small. It is not the percentage that actually matters, it is what the increase itself represents. As I said in my post addressed to Mr. Whiteside, if this is not an intentional implementation of gear treadmill, then what purpose does the increase in stats serve? If the difference truly is insignificant, then why increase the stat cap at all?

edit: I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here, Fayt, other than random pot shots at perceived or invented holes in my posts.

There was a gap in the ability to obtain them. As in, the difficulty of obtaining a piece of exotic gear and the difficulty in obtaining a piece of legendary gear was massive.

I’ve basically putts’d my way to 80, and obtained a few exotics here and there along the way with minimal effort. The difficulty of obtaining a legendary is so great, I would likely never attempt to get one. I now have something that I will probably enjoy working towards, even through it has a minimal stat increase.

Ascended and infusion rewards will be available in both PvE and WvW over time, and be made available through all sorts of content around the world including existing content. PvP will remain unaffected to ensure our intended PvP balance going forward.
Chris Whiteside – Studio Design Director

I have been playing MMOs off-and-on since 1997. I primarily love player-driven conflicts. As such, I really love WvW in Guild Wars 2.

I would like to say that I LOVE the idea of Ascended gear. It shouldn’t be too grindy, and it shouldn’t be significantly more powerful than exotics. However, gear progression in some form SHOULD exist — just don’t make me raid endlessly for it.

Giving players all “carrot” is not a good idea if you actually want them to “stick” around.

Seeing Anet take back it’s stupid, unrealistic design principles in favor of more tired and true MMO mechanics pleases me greatly. I’ll be enjoying the new content while the rest of the sorry excuse for a playerbase makes mountains out of molehills.

Well look at the positives people, they made this guy (who is totally polite and nice) happy! Huzzah!

It’s difficult to be polite and nice when you have to sift through this many pages of naysayers and negativity, all complaining about the same thing. If it’s that much of a big deal, then why don’t people just go back to Guild Wars 1? Oh of course, because that game is outdated, and as much as people might praise it over GW2, it’s always difficult to return to the older game.

Another example of why progression appeals to basic human nature, and why it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

And yes, I am pretty happy that we’re getting new content and a new tier of gear to aim for. I haven’t even gotten full exotics for most of my characters, and now I can relax and farm it at my leasure knowing that I have another tier to work towards once I’m done with my exotics.

Why are you even here? Why did this game appeal to you, elitist circlejerking ultr4h4rdc0r3 gamer?

I already answered that in another post.

Because it has more content and better systems than TERA. I don’t play WoW, and I’ll never go back to Ragnarok ever again because the cash shop has spoiled that game too much, making it more expensive than I can afford.

If Tera would upgrade content to include more items, better crafting, more mmo-esque conditions (GW2 has a very nice condition damage system), then yes, I would gladly go back to TERA in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, GW2 is better than Tera right now, and that’s not really saying much. This game has a lot of really great points that I feel are a fine step forward in the MMO genre, however it’s also very lacking in areas that most dedicated MMO players would agree are mandatory.

So you prefer to play a game you consider “ahead”, just to cry as much as you can to set it back to where you came from? Primitive, number based games? Item grind? Know what, might just go back and take those downsides while crying to make them better instead of spoiling other people’s fun, egodonkey.

As someone who plays mostly WvW I am dreading the introduction of Ascended armor. It creates an unnecessary and potentially game breaking gear grind that will pull people away from the borderlands and force players into grinding dungeons just to stay competitive in WvW. I’m also furious that all of the exotic gear that I worked so hard for has now been made irrelevant.

There is only one solution to this horrendous development. Ascended gear should have the same stats as exotics.

This has obviously been planned for a while, so why hasn’t it been mentioned in any of the recent interviews? I’m sorry, but dropping the news of sweeping game changes a few days before a patch launches just isn’t acceptable in my eyes. Communication is important and we need to know exactly what is on the table for the immediate future.

Why would they tell us? obviously they want us to buy gems for fine transmute stones for our exotic armour. If people knew, they wouldn’t have bothered. Now lets move on to ascended!

Guess a business is always a business, and this mmo aint that revolutionary after all.

I’d like to respond to concerns players have raised about ascended items. Please keep in mind that we’re releasing this as one portion of a massive November update that introduces and improves many aspects of challenge, progression, and rewards. With this and upcoming updates, we view ourselves as introducing large amounts of content with supporting systems and features, akin to an expansion pack, building on Guild Wars 2 through a series of live releases. So it’s important for us to be able to add an expansion pack’s worth of progression and rewards to support that content.

No one is against new content. We are against changes that completely fly in the face of multiple claims made by your team during the development of the game, including your own company president.

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.

You say you are not adding a gear treadmill then go on to talk about how you are adding said tier of gear that is better then anything else out there. Umm…Yeah.

Ascended and infusion rewards will be available in both PvE and WvW over time, and be made available through all sorts of content around the world including existing content. PvP will remain unaffected to ensure our intended PvP balance going forward. We are also working on other reward and progression systems for the game that tie into current and new content and features. As you know we care very much about your support and opinion and are listening intently to what you say.

If you care so much about our support, why are you going ahead with a plan that goes against your very own design manifesto? I and many others bought this game because we could pick it up at any time and experience any content available to my level. I don’t care how much time you give us to get this new Ascended nonsense. The fact of the matter is you and the other developers have completely back flipped on one of the very core tenants you had but a few months ago. You are putting gear treadmills and content gating via resistance checks (a failed experiment in many other MMOs, I might add) in the very same patch and wonder why players are upset?

I don’t mind saying I feel pretty kitten foolish putting stock in all the claims this game would be different to other MMOs. I encouraged many of my friends to try and now you are trying to ram-rod in the very elements we were trying to escape.

Finally we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the upcoming content, and we will ensure we share our thoughts with you on the experiences we share in the Lost Shores.

Chris Whiteside – Studio Design Director

There are plenty of “thoughts” about it right now. Just look about the forums.

Quoted for truth.

It doesn’t matter how much time people have to collect the new ascended items, it’s still vertical progression. The currently slight gap will only widen as more contents are released, and a few years later, we have will just be another treadmill.

Hrm really? They specifically said there will NEVER be any increase in gear stats? Like you heard one of them say those exact words? Cause if they only mentioned something that sounded similar its not the same, as before the manifest is NOT a contract. They are free to change and add whatever content they want to the game. I mean they created Guildwars 2 they didn’t have us harping on them and look how great it turned out.

I never suggested that their manifesto is a contract, nor that they are somehow forbidden from changing the game as they see fit. In the same spirit, I am allowed to provide my feedback.

In my opinion, their single stat plateau without a gear treadmill is one of the things that makes Guild Wars 2 so great. Without that, I am much less interested in staying with this game in the long term. It might still be great (or greater!) for others, which is fine, just not for me.

Hrm yes I read that blog to, allow me to pull a part of it,

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

They don’t need to make gear treadmills, they just now chose to do it, its optional, your not being forced to grind for it, and those that will might have a slight advantage over others, but a game the boasts the skill of a player this shouldn’t make a whole lot of difference right? Seriously you guys are blowing this way out of proportion.

Yes, they don’t need to make gear treadmills. Yes, they chose to do this. No, it is not optional – in fact they explicitly include a gating mechanic as part of the new gear in addition to the stats.

You’ll also note that they say the player shouldn’t need the latest gear – that the player would still be “just as powerful” without it. How is that not explicitly broken here?

How am I blowing it out of proportion? They said they wouldn’t do this. Now, they apparently are doing this. At what point have I exaggerated?

Yes, the percentage change in stats here is fairly small. It is not the percentage that actually matters, it is what the increase itself represents. As I said in my post addressed to Mr. Whiteside, if this is not an intentional implementation of gear treadmill, then what purpose does the increase in stats serve? If the difference truly is insignificant, then why increase the stat cap at all?

The increase in stats is simple, players wanted more end game content, or thats what was said, honestly though I could care less, I’m just glad they give a kitten to even give us more content, and yes another player can be just as powerful without ascended gear, keep in mind our individual builds are stat driven, you might have a few additional stat perks but in the long run it won’t decide the outcome of a skill driven battle.

I think people, especially those arguing with me, are overlooking one detail; the whole point of infusion slots is to overcome the new Agony stat. Back in GW1 we had a similar system where in infused armor granted resistance to the Spectral Agony skill, so I fell confident in speculating that this will work in a similar fashion. A big point being brought up is the offensive and defensive infusion slots, as if this means they must be stat based. I say they don’t, and I’ll give some examples off the top of my head.

Defensive: Reduce agony duration by X, reduce agony damage by X, gain regeneration when under the effects of agony, ect.

Offensive: Deal X greater damage while under the effects of Agony, gain X crit chance while under the effects of Agony, gain might when under the effects of Agony, ect.

I’m going to go out on a limb and bet that the effects from infused gear will be conditional, dependent on being effected by the new Agony stat or at least fighting creature types that use said skill. If this is indeed the case than pretty much every argument about infusion slots equaling rune or sigil slots evaporates. Frankly it wouldn’t matter at all if every single upgrade in the game as an infusion equivalent if I’m right and those upgrades are themselves dependent on the Agony condition to trigger. And I remind you this condition is ONLY found in the new dungeon. In fact I’d say this is little different than the gear separation we already have; now we have PvE gear, sPvP gear, and endless dungeon gear.

I understand your concern but at this point we don’t have enough information to go on, so you shouldn’t just assume the worse. This community has embarrassed itself before doing that.

I think people like you are overlooking one detail.

This is content gates. The entire Agony mechanic is not new. It’s been done in other games, and it does not work. It almost fully killed off LOTRO, and even WoW removed attunements way back near the end of their 1st expansion. Content/Gear Gates ruin games. We were promised accessible content for all, limited solely by player skill.

No matter what they do with progressive gear (which we were also promised we would not have to deal with), and no matter what the infusions actually do, people are going to be denied access to some* of the games content without replacing their current gear.

It should also be noted that “some” in this case basically means, all content that is not currently in the game before this update. So -all- future content will be similarly gated. This isn’t speculation, they admit as much right in the blog. This is their new thing! Attunements! Something WoW abandoned due to player retention issues, something that caused a middlingly profitable mmo (lotro) to become a F2P one, is their new endgame.

Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two.

If this was what ArenaNet was actually doing, this blowback wouldn’t be happening.

Currently, there is zero jump in reward between Exotics and Legendaries. Ascended gear is introducing a massive jump in reward between the two.

There’s already intermediates between ‘My first Exotic weapon’ and Legendaries, anyway. Anyone who’s just hit 80 is likely to first get themselves a boring looking crafted Pearl weapon. After that, they can upgrade to a number of higher-end Exotics that don’t break the bank: dungeon token gear, or any of the other weapons with cool unique models but no special particle effects. There are the special Halloween weapons and skins, and there’s an entire list of specifically craftable Mystic Forge Exotic weapons which all have unique appearances, and run the gamut from something that a player could make with a few days or a week of playing, to sub-Legendaries like Foefire’s Essence that actually require some of the same Gifts that are used to create Legendaries. If Legendary materials hadn’t skyrocketed to a truly ridiculous degree based on the extreme scarcity of some of their components, it would be a fairly smooth progression curve, as well – the only discontinuity is happening at the Legendary level, where it goes off the charts.

There is already a very healthy cosmetic progression curve in the game. No offense, but pretending that Exotics are Exotics are Exotics and that there’s nothing for a player to work toward between a Pearl Broadsword and a Twilight strikes me as a little disingenuous.

The “exotic to legendary” line makes absolutely no sense. There is no stat difference between exotics and legendaries today. You have even said as much. So why is there a stat difference in this new set? Why couldn’t it be just infusion slots?

And why is it okay for WvW players to be left behind for one patch, even if it’s very minor?

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.

Chris Whiteside – Studio Design Director

This bolded section is losing me. Exotics and Legendaries have the same stats at the moment, so the reward of a legendary is purely cosmetic. That means I don’t have to get a legendary to be on equal footing against somebody that already has a legendary. Only by adding the Ascended gear (and infusion style mechanics) is a gap being created. Which means your either ignorant of things as the actually stand, or being willfully obtuse to obscure what your doing in the hopes it will all blow over.

If you’d given me some clear reasoning, I would have at least respected the fact that you (the devs) were willing to put all the cards on the table. This more or less canned response though doesn’t restore my confidence that there’s even some well thought out reasoning behind the shift. It goes to show that yet again developers have gotten very good at using PR people to project a game image that they have no intention of maintaining.

There was a gap in the ability to obtain them. As in, the difficulty of obtaining a piece of exotic gear and the difficulty in obtaining a piece of legendary gear was massive.

I’ve basically putts’d my way to 80, and obtained a few exotics here and there along the way with minimal effort. The difficulty of obtaining a legendary is so great, I would likely never attempt to get one. I now have something that I will probably enjoy working towards, even through it has a minimal stat increase.

I also never intended to get a legendary, but I still had something to work towards. I got multiple sets of exotics and I just finished my Arah set. There is always a new goal, we don’t need stats for that.

It doesn’t matter how much time people have to collect the new ascended items, it’s still vertical progression. The currently slight gap will only widen as more contents are released, and a few years later, we have will just be another treadmill.

This is what worries me the most. It took them less then three months to betray their own word, a word given by their own company president. Are we honestly expected to be stupid enough to believe there will not be more tiers to be added to the treadmill once the WoW kiddies they are trying to win over with this plan get bored of their Ascended nonsense?

There was a gap in the ability to obtain them. As in, the difficulty of obtaining a piece of exotic gear and the difficulty in obtaining a piece of legendary gear was massive.

I’ve basically putts’d my way to 80, and obtained a few exotics here and there along the way with minimal effort. The difficulty of obtaining a legendary is so great, I would likely never attempt to get one. I now have something that I will probably enjoy working towards, even through it has a minimal stat increase.

There is no reason to add a whole new tier set if legendaries were hard to get. They will still be just as hard to get, even if you have all ascended gear.

Didn’t the Guild wars team say that they were making the game for both hardcore and casual players?

If so, then why are the casuals complaining so much when the hardcore players FINALLY get some meaningful content? In case you haven’t noticed, every single design decision in this game so far has been centered around making sure the casual players feel comfortable and pampered.

Where is an increase in statistical power “meaningful content”?

A tank&spank fight with 50k boss hp and 250 player dps is as boring as a tank&spank fight with 500k boss hp and 2.5k player dps.

Meaningful content isn’t made by bigger numbers, meaningful content isn’t made by new gear.
Meaningful content is made by good encounter design, story and all the other little things to do, not by being forced to get X (infusions, and to use them ascended armor) to do Y (fractals of the mist).
The only thing that is increased with ascended gear is the gap between new players and old ones. It also limits the endgame content from pretty much everything to stuff where you can get ascended armor.
If you want to play an alt you have to do all the things again that you may have done too many times to reach the point where you can play with your friends again that want to play the new dungeon.

I always get the impression that the gear progression crowd is to bad to beat the content without the possibility to out gear it.

I don’t see where this is anything good. This is as game breaking as the SWG’s NGE for me to be honest. I feel bad for all the people I talked into GW2 and I’m really disappointed by ArenaNet. From hero to zero I guess.

They also said that Legendary weapons weren’t finished, people just assumed they where just talking about aesthetics.

And they´d add to their stats?…wouldn´t that make them better than not so rare gear then? You know, like they said it wouldn´t be?

The game currently has a clear max stat gear that´s exotics, all other rare skins have same amount os stats, including legendaries.
Now they pump up legendaries and make a new tier, making rarer items more powerful.

They didn’t say they would or that they wouldn’t.

Look, you still had to “grind” to get those exotics(dungeons, karma, tokens, craft whatever), else you would be using rares or worst, what is the big deal in getting a new set of gear?

It makes the same difference as a full exotic player going vs a full rare player, the full rare player if its better will always wipe the floor with him anyway, this makes 0 difference in wvw specially because most fights are won by the biggest mob. In pve if you don’t want to make the dungeon just don’t, you would get the gear just by doing it anyway.

I’d be really proud of ANet if they decided against this and focused on appearance (looks, weapon particle effects, sound effects, etc…), and used the time to introduce new weapons or skills to round out class types to further move away from the trinity.

Hrm really? They specifically said there will NEVER be any increase in gear stats? Like you heard one of them say those exact words? Cause if they only mentioned something that sounded similar its not the same, as before the manifest is NOT a contract. They are free to change and add whatever content they want to the game. I mean they created Guildwars 2 they didn’t have us harping on them and look how great it turned out.

I never suggested that their manifesto is a contract, nor that they are somehow forbidden from changing the game as they see fit. In the same spirit, I am allowed to provide my feedback.

In my opinion, their single stat plateau without a gear treadmill is one of the things that makes Guild Wars 2 so great. Without that, I am much less interested in staying with this game in the long term. It might still be great (or greater!) for others, which is fine, just not for me.

Hrm yes I read that blog to, allow me to pull a part of it,

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

They don’t need to make gear treadmills, they just now chose to do it, its optional, your not being forced to grind for it, and those that will might have a slight advantage over others, but a game the boasts the skill of a player this shouldn’t make a whole lot of difference right? Seriously you guys are blowing this way out of proportion.

Yes, they don’t need to make gear treadmills. Yes, they chose to do this. No, it is not optional – in fact they explicitly include a gating mechanic as part of the new gear in addition to the stats.

You’ll also note that they say the player shouldn’t need the latest gear – that the player would still be “just as powerful” without it. How is that not explicitly broken here?

How am I blowing it out of proportion? They said they wouldn’t do this. Now, they apparently are doing this. At what point have I exaggerated?

Yes, the percentage change in stats here is fairly small. It is not the percentage that actually matters, it is what the increase itself represents. As I said in my post addressed to Mr. Whiteside, if this is not an intentional implementation of gear treadmill, then what purpose does the increase in stats serve? If the difference truly is insignificant, then why increase the stat cap at all?

The increase in stats is simple, players wanted more end game content, or thats what was said, honestly though I could care less, I’m just glad they give a kitten to even give us more content, and yes another player can be just as powerful without ascended gear, keep in mind our individual builds are stat driven, you might have a few additional stat perks but in the long run it won’t decide the outcome of a skill driven battle.

Higher stats does not equal more end game content, nor are higher stats necessary for more end game content.

No one is upset about the addition of new content here – in fact, as I said to Mr. Whiteside, I’m sure most if not all people here are very pleased to be getting new content this month.

A player with exotic gear cannot be just as powerful as a player with ascended gear. It is mathematically impossible. As demonstrated in their example of an ascended item alongside a level 80 exotic item, ascended items have a higher stat cap.

If the difference in stats is truly insignificant, why did they add it at all? (Yes, I did ask this question already, and you did already answer, but as I address in my first paragraph here your answer is nonsensical.)

This is extremely disappointing. My age is like 540 and I was having a lot of fun with the game without a gear grind by playing dungeons with fun mechanics. Now you introduce a new tier of gear that ensures fewer people will be playing any dungeon besides Fractals of the Mists, violating a promise you made when releasing this game and disappointing me as a customer.

I was having fun gearing and leveling alts. I’m a dungeon farmer and could get this gear almost immediately. But I’m having trouble finding a reason to login. I wanted an MMO about skill, not stats, and you came so close to finally making an MMO that’s essentially an action game that it’s infuriating to see you fail here.

Want to add something between exotics and legendaries? Make legendary armor that looks good with no stat bonus. Of course, pumping stats is easier than hiring artists, which is why I imagine this route was taken.

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.

The bolded part is where you’ve lost me. Are you aware that legendary weapons have the same stats as exotics? Legendary weapons ARE NOT a higher tiered reward. Sure, they got a different coloured text, better looking and take more time but they are purely COSMETIC. They are the equivalent of obsidian armor in gw1. Lots of work to get them, but you get them for their looks, not their stats. There is no gap between exotics and legendaries other than time and money. What anet is doing is artificially creating the gap by raising the power of legendaries so that they now have an excuse to add a gear treadmill to this game. You can say that your GOAL isn’t to have a gear treadmill but the REALITY is that you are, in fact, creating it.

Where’s the gap? Someone who wants something in between base exotics and legendaries can work on a lot of other things.

In this patch they could have added:
E4-5 weapons for achieving a very high rank in Fractals repeatedly
E3 & E4 armor as you get deeper into Fractals
Retextures of popular E1-3 armor skins. Blue-fire CoF armor, gold & red glyphic weapons, etc.
E6 gear that’s even more impressive and difficult to get than existing exotics, but still isn’t quite legendary.
A formal ranking system for bragging rights—classify the exotics along the lines I did here, so people who are looking for that kind of gratification can say “I’m E4 in all slots and have a few E5s”

Of course, all of this costs money, in terms of paying artists to keep designing rad-looking gear. It’s so much cheaper for them to make Ascended rings.

Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two.

If this was what ArenaNet was actually doing, this blowback wouldn’t be happening.

Currently, there is zero jump in reward between Exotics and Legendaries. Ascended gear is introducing a massive jump in reward between the two.

There’s already intermediates between ‘My first Exotic weapon’ and Legendaries, anyway. Anyone who’s just hit 80 is likely to first get themselves a boring looking crafted Pearl weapon. After that, they can upgrade to a number of higher-end Exotics that don’t break the bank: dungeon token gear, or any of the other weapons with cool unique models but no special particle effects. There are the special Halloween weapons and skins, and there’s an entire list of specifically craftable Mystic Forge Exotic weapons which all have unique appearances, and run the gamut from something that a player could make with a few days or a week of playing, to sub-Legendaries like Foefire’s Essence that actually require some of the same Gifts that are used to create Legendaries. If Legendary materials hadn’t skyrocketed to a truly ridiculous degree based on the extreme scarcity of some of their components, it would be a fairly smooth progression curve, as well – the only discontinuity is happening at the Legendary level, where it goes off the charts.

There is already a very healthy cosmetic progression curve in the game. No offense, but pretending that Exotics are Exotics are Exotics and that there’s nothing for a player to work toward between a Pearl Broadsword and a Twilight strikes me as a little disingenuous.

This is pure genius. Please, everyone +1 this gentleman’s/madam’s post. There was something there in that blog post that bugged me quite a bit and I couldn’t figure out what it was, as bothered as I was with the increased stats and content gates. This hits the nail on the head. This post here is a sterling example of why the entire blog post is disingenuous, the premises they are claiming exist to support these changes… do not exist.

Did some TA today and completed my exotic condition set, too bad it will all be replaced with ascended in due time, I’m not even buying condition rings cause I know ascended rings will be better soon. Let the treadmill begin.

Then they’ll just give another response to placate you. Then you’ll grind the new tier, wouldn’t you? repeat ad infinitum. Thats reaaaal fun. Not like wow, guys! I promise!

People are angry because they loved the game. They had faith, and believed in ANET’s initial statements. All this anger and negativity is totally justified.

The irony is they stand to drive off more of their once-customers then they might of retained by appeasing the WoW mentality. Nothing short of foolishness if you ask me. Many came to this game to escape the very concepts they are trying to force upon us. It is not going to end well.

I think people, especially those arguing with me, are overlooking one detail; the whole point of infusion slots is to overcome the new Agony stat. Back in GW1 we had a similar system where in infused armor granted resistance to the Spectral Agony skill, so I fell confident in speculating that this will work in a similar fashion. A big point being brought up is the offensive and defensive infusion slots, as if this means they must be stat based. I say they don’t, and I’ll give some examples off the top of my head.

Defensive: Reduce agony duration by X, reduce agony damage by X, gain regeneration when under the effects of agony, ect.

Offensive: Deal X greater damage while under the effects of Agony, gain X crit chance while under the effects of Agony, gain might when under the effects of Agony, ect.

I’m going to go out on a limb and bet that the effects from infused gear will be conditional, dependent on being effected by the new Agony stat or at least fighting creature types that use said skill. If this is indeed the case than pretty much every argument about infusion slots equaling rune or sigil slots evaporates. Frankly it wouldn’t matter at all if every single upgrade in the game as an infusion equivalent if I’m right and those upgrades are themselves dependent on the Agony condition to trigger. And I remind you this condition is ONLY found in the new dungeon. In fact I’d say this is little different than the gear separation we already have; now we have PvE gear, sPvP gear, and endless dungeon gear.

I understand your concern but at this point we don’t have enough information to go on, so you shouldn’t just assume the worse. This community has embarrassed itself before doing that.

I think people like you are overlooking one detail.

This is content gates. The entire Agony mechanic is not new. It’s been done in other games, and it does not work. It almost fully killed off LOTRO, and even WoW removed attunements way back near the end of their 1st expansion. Content/Gear Gates ruin games. We were promised accessible content for all, limited solely by player skill.

No matter what they do with progressive gear (which we were also promised we would not have to deal with), and no matter what the infusions actually do, people are going to be denied access to some* of the games content without replacing their current gear.

It should also be noted that “some” in this case basically means, all content that is not currently in the game before this update. So -all- future content will be similarly gated. This isn’t speculation, they admit as much right in the blog. This is their new thing! Attunements! Something WoW abandoned due to player retention issues, something that caused a middlingly profitable mmo (lotro) to become a F2P one, is their new endgame.

I can name a game wherein it did work. Guild Wars. Look it up. Go on the wiki and search for “Spectral Agony.”

Bless your hearts! You keep trying to explain it better, but you just end up confirming players’ fears. I think what many are saying is that they just don’t want any further vertical gear progression. Period. That includes legendaries, which don’t have better stats at the moment.

There’s a fine line between love and hate and people wouldn’t be this upset if they didn’t really love the game.

So true. I am pissed because I loved the game…check my account history Anet. I’ve logged in EVERY DAY since the pre-launch head start access. I’ve bought lots of gems too.

Today I played with my RL friend that I actually bought the game for so we could play together, and both of us felt a real loss of the excitement and love of the game after finding out about this.

I had been so excited about the new content since the Halloween event ended, but now all I feel is dread.
Whether the new tier of gear is all available at once, or it is trickle fed into the game alongside new content, it still goes against what was promised in the lead up to release.
This thread shows that even people who never post in the forums, like myself, are going out of their way to tell you this is not what they want. Instead of repeating that this is “not a gear treadmill”, try listening to your customers.

I still wonder who´s bringing the money to ANet.
The hardcore players who play more than 5 hours a day or the casuals, with a RL Job and the money to spend in the Gemshop?

But maybe ANet is really going a different way from the other development studios. Other developers startet with a subscription fee and wenn free to play. Maybe ANet may introduce a monthly fee in some months to come?

I´ve been a hardcore gamer too, a long time ago, when I was:

1. in school
2. in university

but money I would not spend above 15 Bucks a month for an online game.
Now with a full-time job I already spend 80 Bucks last month alone for the Gemshop.

Sorry, but my money will not be available for the Gemshop anytime soon anymore if the hardcore gamers are the crowd ANet is going to listen to in the future despite the slogans they hurled into the world before the launch of GW2.

I startet to play GW2 because it hast no Item-Treadmill, no Gated-Content.

Broken promises result in locked purses. So good luck opening that one with your Black Lion Key.

I hope the hardcore gamers can farm some RL Money to spend it in GW2 beside their Progress-Raids, Item-Treadmill and Gated-Content-Farming.

And the only real argument for my friends to come to play GW2 would have been no Progress-Raids, Item-Treadmill and Gated-Content-Farming.

So the generous offer to invite 3 friends to test-play GW2 is sooo off now…because Progress-Raids, Item-Treadmill and Gated-Content-Farming they all got in the other game they are playing and there they´ve got their beloved characters and friends. There is really no incentive to switch game now.

dark days are coming…

And if they (ANet) don´t want the new gear for sPvP because of balancing reasons, but introduce it to PvE AND WvWvW, then there will be an unbalance in WvWvW. You will get smitten like a kitten under a truck in WvW if you don´t have the new gear.

Yeah, saddle and ride an already dead horse, cause LOTRO had the same mechanic just called Radiance. LOTRO got rid of it, eventually. Here´s a link:

“[…]Certain raids including The Vile Maw and Dâr Narbugud subjected characters to gloom, requiring them to wear armour with +radiance in order to avoid cowering and debuffs.
[…]As said, radiance is no longer in-game.”

If arenanet actually cared about their players they would have a poll on this. But they’re too stubborn to realize 90% of their player base doesn’t want this but they’re going to force it down our throats.

I’d like to respond to concerns players have raised about ascended items. Please keep in mind that we’re releasing this as one portion of a massive November update that introduces and improves many aspects of challenge, progression, and rewards. With this and upcoming updates, we view ourselves as introducing large amounts of content with supporting systems and features, akin to an expansion pack, building on Guild Wars 2 through a series of live releases. So it’s important for us to be able to add an expansion pack’s worth of progression and rewards to support that content.

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.

Ascended and infusion rewards will be available in both PvE and WvW over time, and be made available through all sorts of content around the world including existing content. PvP will remain unaffected to ensure our intended PvP balance going forward. We are also working on other reward and progression systems for the game that tie into current and new content and features. As you know we care very much about your support and opinion and are listening intently to what you say.

Finally we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the upcoming content, and we will ensure we share our thoughts with you on the experiences we share in the Lost Shores.

“The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”

does not describe the actual product I’ve purchased. I’m glad that your business model is built with the option for me to not support your game further with my money to be able to continue playing, and I am certainly not going to support a company that sold me a product based on the above lie.